If you get paid as an independent contractor (with a 1099), and what you show as income on your return doesn't match up, you'll get a "friendly" letter about it.
Remove income taxes and go with a straight sales tax on final goods. That way you're not taxing the inputs (labor) from the US any more than you would be taxing the inputs from another country.
Isn't the VAT more insidious than sales tax is in the states? Sales tax is only placed on the end use, but isn't the VAT applied at each stage of production?
Raw materials - taxed
Manufactured parts - taxed
Assembled thing - taxed
Wholesale things - taxed
Retailed things - taxed (and this is the only place in the states where the sales tax is charged).
Bundling is how the cable companies can get away with charging what they do for basic cable, but I'll bet that the cost per channel will be higher if this were to happen.
First, I have no problem with banks being regulated - I have no desire to ever see a run on banks like the great depression. Safety and soundness should be the goal of all regulations.
Our motto is "Whatever is seen here or heard here stays here" and we've lived by that for 80 years.
GLB was prompted by a "bad actor" bank in Minnesota that thought that they'd make some extra money by selling information that they had no business selling. Those guys should have been strung up.
Because of the bad actions of a small number of banks, all of us need to generate extra paperwork for the customers, and need to keep track of it. You send out privacy notices once per year to your entire customer base - what percentage of them do you think actually read that? What good does it actually do?
Yes, I do. I work in banking. Most of the regulations imposed upon that industry are there because of the bad actions of the stupid few - and they do little good.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act added financial privacy regulations. What difference does it make to the consumer - precious little, they get a mailing once per year saying something about privacy. Like most other regulations, it's a paper chase for the financial institutions - we've got to send out those pieces of paper to stay in the good graces of the regulators.
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but to say that the government can't make things worse is just plain silly.
I worked in an AS/400 shop in 1995 and 1996. At that time, OS/2 wasn't quite dead (I think that they had just launched Warp!) and OS/2 actually integrated quite well into that environment.
I think that IBM probably launched OS/2 Warp a bit early - they had an OS designed to take advantage of the internet (as opposed to Windows 3.1), but that was before the internet had taken off.
This is the one place where I wouldn't mind a little government intervention, toward an open and efficient standard. They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.
Doesn't sound like you work in a regulated industry.
You don't get 53 billion in an account by casually sending in 500 million in "taxes" when you don't have to. No matter how much you've got, that still has got to hurt.
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The IRS already does this.
If you get paid as an independent contractor (with a 1099), and what you show as income on your return doesn't match up, you'll get a "friendly" letter about it.
If the economy tanked badly enough to fail all banks, you'll have worse problems than getting seven cents on the dollar!
By the way, that whole S&L deal in the early 90's required a federal government bailout becuase the S&L insurance fund was underfunded.
Except for that, the entire amount of the fund is insurance paid for by banks, not a quasi-magic "lockbox" dreamed up like social security.
Or Homer could have the Barney Rubble voice change
Yeah - that was some good work to do.
As a bank, we were well on our way to getting everything ready to go, and then we had our exam and were "asked" to document everything.
Long story short - the regulators tripled the amount of work to do without effectively adding any additional safety to the banking system.
They do regulate security in banking. It has become a "safety and soundness" issue in the last couple of years.
Nothing more fun than having a bank examiner talk to you about network security - when they don't know much about it.
Remove income taxes and go with a straight sales tax on final goods. That way you're not taxing the inputs (labor) from the US any more than you would be taxing the inputs from another country.
I realiaze that, but it still an extra item to be tracked, and it also inflates the cost of the final product.
I don't have a problem with it, but it seems more morally wrong than a sales tax on the final item.
Isn't the VAT more insidious than sales tax is in the states? Sales tax is only placed on the end use, but isn't the VAT applied at each stage of production?
Raw materials - taxed
Manufactured parts - taxed
Assembled thing - taxed
Wholesale things - taxed
Retailed things - taxed (and this is the only place in the states where the sales tax is charged).
If you don't like the weather in Iowa ... just wait a bit and it will change.
In all seriousness, it's not that bad for that long, and during the summer, Iowa's one of the most beautiful places around.
Shh.....
Don't give it away.
In all seriousness, Iowa is a nice place to live and even the worst commutes that you could get in the state (like Des Moines) are nothing.
In Iowa, we get the best of both worlds. Hot and humid during the summer and very cold and windy during the winter.
There aren't too many places in the country that are hotter andcolder than Iowa.
They make it up with sales tax.
Of course, here in Iowa, we have the "best" of both worlds - high income tax and high sales tax.
but raise cable prices for all.
Bundling is how the cable companies can get away with charging what they do for basic cable, but I'll bet that the cost per channel will be higher if this were to happen.
For Regicide press 1
If you know the name of the king or queen killed, please press 1 now...
Don't let facts get in the way of politics.
Wasn't there a time when 5% unemployment was considered "full emplpoyment" and that any lower unemployment rates were inflationary?
First, I have no problem with banks being regulated - I have no desire to ever see a run on banks like the great depression. Safety and soundness should be the goal of all regulations.
Our motto is "Whatever is seen here or heard here stays here" and we've lived by that for 80 years.
GLB was prompted by a "bad actor" bank in Minnesota that thought that they'd make some extra money by selling information that they had no business selling. Those guys should have been strung up.
Because of the bad actions of a small number of banks, all of us need to generate extra paperwork for the customers, and need to keep track of it. You send out privacy notices once per year to your entire customer base - what percentage of them do you think actually read that? What good does it actually do?
Yes, I do. I work in banking. Most of the regulations imposed upon that industry are there because of the bad actions of the stupid few - and they do little good.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act added financial privacy regulations. What difference does it make to the consumer - precious little, they get a mailing once per year saying something about privacy. Like most other regulations, it's a paper chase for the financial institutions - we've got to send out those pieces of paper to stay in the good graces of the regulators.
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but to say that the government can't make things worse is just plain silly.
I worked in an AS/400 shop in 1995 and 1996. At that time, OS/2 wasn't quite dead (I think that they had just launched Warp!) and OS/2 actually integrated quite well into that environment.
I think that IBM probably launched OS/2 Warp a bit early - they had an OS designed to take advantage of the internet (as opposed to Windows 3.1), but that was before the internet had taken off.
This is the one place where I wouldn't mind a little government intervention, toward an open and efficient standard. They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.
Doesn't sound like you work in a regulated industry.
Hi. I from the government. I'm here to help you.
Agreed (hate agreeing with a hawkeye though)
Even just a heat pump or something to cool a server room while venting the heat into the living/work areas would have to save something.
There shouldn't be many real differences between that kind of job and one in the real world.
Isn't that what Gator does too?
If an estate is big enough to require a professional agent, it is likely that there are a lot of unhappy relatives out there hassling that agent.
Corn?
Watermelon?
You don't get 53 billion in an account by casually sending in 500 million in "taxes" when you don't have to. No matter how much you've got, that still has got to hurt.